Dextennis Forum 2023 hard court season

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Death Vine

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Directed by: Michelle Keller
Screenplay by: Michelle Keller
Produced by: Barkley Clive and Jane Carpentry
Run time: 113 minutes
Rating: R (violence, language)
Starring
Bill M. LaFriend as Chip Manney
Steve as the Death Vine
Jimmy Dann as Lovell Manney
Danny Knight-Loomis as Detective Hunter Chase
Jenna Lynn Carrish as Oakley Flood
Burt Ruster as The 'Husband'

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Synopsis
Chip Manney is a botanist for the Conservation Bureau in Palmeras, the Spanish Coast. One day he arrives at the lab to find a gigantic, snaking plant at the center of a workstation, which his lab partner Oakley Flood explains is a rare invasive species they were ordered to analyze. Though he complains about their caseload already overflowing with reports for environmental impact studies, Manney caves and accepts. Later that day, upon a cursory inspection, the long and winding plant appears vibrant to the point of oddly shimmering, stretching out shoots and stems thicker than Manney's fingers, with moist, wide leaves broad enough to kite. As his partner zips by, he stops Flood to ask just what makes this specimen worth their time and attention. She unearths its infamy amongst obscure invasive species, owed to its growth at abnormally rapid rates, ability to flourish even in extreme environments and supposedly dark, mystical powers according to local legend, leading to its nomenclature Evilus incarnatus and its more common name Death Vine. Nature Council officials, Flood says, had tasked their office with gathering information to prevent a potential outbreak. Manney decides to set up monitors tracking the specimen's growth, while sending Flood out to find similar samples in the same species to use as controls for testing. By the end of the day, Manney has completed an extensive network of intricate laser scanners, time-lapse cameras and taped x-marks surrounding the specimen, though his partner hasn't returned for the day - which he figures is often normal. Clocking out and one turn of the knob from leaving for home, the botanist stops. Something in the lab is whispering. Slowly turning around, he sees nothing but the specimen. The whispers stop.

Commuting home, the bus comes to a screeching halt at a red light. And stays there long after the light turns green. Manney glances around the bus and then at the driving attendant, wondering what the hold-up is. The self-driving bus isn't moving, and neither is the state-mandated attendant behind the wheel. The botanist tries to wrap his mind around just what is so truly off about this picture, until chilling clues jump out: the attendant's twigs for hands and vines for hair, passengers with wooden stumps for legs and moss slowly creeping over the floor. Suddenly, roots burst out passenger's books, bus pamphlets and other unsuspecting papers as colossal trees blow open the bus roof, while the road outside crumbles into an overgrown field quaking from exploding chunks of collapsing skyscrapers. Manney screams himself awake, pouring with sweat in his safe, indoor bed. His husband Lovell frantically asks if he's alright, to which he responds that he had night terrors again, while catching his breath as he checks around the room suspiciously. The following day, Manney ambles into the lab - and finds the Death Vine suddenly missing. Even the laser scanners, cameras and x-marks he painstakingly set up are all gone too. Confronting his lab partner, Flood appears bewildered and has zero recollection of the specimen whatsoever, let alone being sent out to gather controls from the same species. An exasperated, stunned Manney searches everywhere, but eventually gives up. Throughout the day, burying himself in other work, he glances over at the empty workstation. Only upon returning home does he find relief - in the most peculiar way possible. After closing the front door and engaging in small talk with Lovell making dinner in the kitchen, the botanist stops dead in his tracks - blood running cold by the sight of a long, snaky E. incarnatus perched upon their coffee table. His husband insists that it had been there for years. Manney decides to take his spouse's word for it, rather than question his own sanity. But the botanist hardly sleeps a wink that night. When he does, he is plagued by further nightmares of cities being violently reclaimed by nature. Sidewalks disintegrate into lush soil, streets melt into roaring rivers and buildings implode into teeming forests. Manney wearily crawls out of bed at dawn, and on his way out the door to return to work, he notices something strange about the plant on the coffee table. Magically, it doubled in size overnight. The botanist decides to get to the bottom of things, and sets off to bring home some equipment from the lab - yet doesn't realize that his nightmares are only beginning.

Outside the lab, he discovers his keycard no longer works no matter what speed, direction or smoothness with which he swipes. He hears complete strangers working inside, audibly raising his heartbeat as beads of sweat roll. Upon identifying his partner however, he pleads for her to come over and help. But when Flood steps out the door, even motioning for him to step back, it suddenly becomes clear that she no longer recognizes him. Manney turns pale as their discussion reveals that he was apparently never even employed there, with his lab partner unable to remember ever seeing him or working with him. Flood acts as though he is a complete stranger guilty of attempted breaking-and-entering. Growing desperate, Manney discloses information relevant to a report he was working on for an environmental impact study, but it only makes his lab partner visibly uncomfortable and defensive. She demands he leave the property immediately or she will call social workers. The botanist swallows his pride and bails from the lab. Expecting a difficult and surreal conversation awaiting him at home, an exhausted Manney finds it even harder to believe that his front door is impenetrably locked and no keys seem to match. He pounds on the door as he reaches his wit's end. Just as his fist almost strikes again, the door swings open. Manney's husband holds it half-open in much the same quizzical and disturbed pose as his lab partner - because he too has absolutely zero recollection of their whole relationship. On the verge of losing his job, his marriage and his home from one mind-warping morning, Manney kicks the door in. Awestruck as he walks inside a totally unrecognizable house, he realizes he toppled Lovell over onto an unfamiliar coffee table which lacks any plant. But his husband lies motionless and unresponsive. After shutting the door and frantically attempting to resuscitate him, Manney starts to pace around trying to think - but he breaks down, and ransacks the living room. The front door then locks by itself. Manney pauses and slowly faces the door, as a wall of ivy skitters away - before something suddenly behind him makes him leap around screaming. A living canopy of aggressive vines, jabbing leaves, menacing roots and other monstrous plantlife swarms Lovell's body and devours it - with sickening sounds of skin slurping, muscle chewing and bone crunching. The botanist's efforts to flee are quickly short-lived: entangled at the ankles and wrists by jungly jeopardy, Manney fails to make it but a few centimeters. Yet he also falls short of the same fate as his now-late spouse. In a deep, dark voice, the Death Vine chastises humanity for not living harmoniously with nature, declaring the botanist and all humanity as its specimen and commanding that more be brought. Manney, begging for his life, promises to do anything that the E. incarnatus wants. The botanist then has visions of a world with constrained human presence, forested dwellings and gorgeous open land with warm fresh air as far as the mind's eye can see.

In a time-lapse sequence, Manney fills the entire house with several centimeters of topsoil - while in local Victim's Assembly headquarters, Detective Hunter Chase is assigned a case for a missing person revealed to be Lovell. They drive to the house, but as the botanist peeks out of the blinds, something halts the detective just as they step out of the car. Manney begins to sweat profusely as his mind visibly races with excuses, eyeing the doorway coated in fractal, breathing roots. For some reason, though thoroughly examining the entire front of the house, Detective Chase never moves but one step forward. As if under the Death Vine's sinister spell, they climb back into the car and drive away. The botanist turns and breathes a sigh of relief into the thriving, vast wilderness that once resembled the concept of a house. Later in the Victim's office, a manhunt forms with a special task force, Lovell's family and enthusiastic volunteers - as the botanist goes out and hunts down business executives found guilty of violating environmental regulations. Surreptitiously inviting these executives to witness 'the world's most evil plant,' Manney delivers these guests to a horrifying freakshow from which they never return. A macabre montage of the Death Vine gorging on severed limbs, bloodied organs and decapitated heads is then juxtaposed by a montage of the manhunt searching everywhere in the city except the house, though everyone who passes by always stops and gazes oddly. Flyers describing missing people overcrowd telephone poles and online discussion boards. Finally, Lovell's surviving 'husband' - a completely different person from Manney - storms into the Victim's office, demanding updates from the officer in charge of the case and eventually urging them to visit their house for a long overdue inspection. Detective Chase explains to him that they visited the house weeks ago, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Yet when the detective struggles to find a copy of the official report, they remember that they only took one step into the front yard - never any further. They feel compelled to agree to go back over, even though something about the husband feels deeply wrong. Soon staring motionless and slack-jawed at the house, Detective Chase is swept up to the front door as the husband marches effortlessly up to and on the porch. He jiggles the door, finding it locked. While reaching for his keys, the door slowly creaks ajar. A cloud of flies scatters out, along with a blast of soaking humid air, as heaps of dirt spill over their ankles. The husband looks at the detective, then slowly nudges open the door as if unwittingly opening a portal to a national park - herein this 'house' lies no furniture, no appliances, not even walls, windows, doors or a floor - only roaring river rapids, expansive terrain and foreboding overcast skies. The door suddenly shuts behind them, causing them to jump and recall that they had never even stepped inside. But neither the husband nor the detective see any door. Instead, a towering humanoid plant rises up and looms - then suddenly darts to grab them. Both of them sprint into the dark and shadowy woods, as the plant monster pursues with unsettling human resemblance. They vanish. After a moment of creepy quiet - distant screams.

A news report suddenly cuts in. An unseen narrator discusses a story about a house connected to a notorious serial killer being condemned for an infestation of invasive species, resulting in the house's scheduled demolition. Footage of the roped-off house appearing dilapidated and abandoned are shown. The news report then zooms out and reveals two plant monsters coiled on a couch, with one curled around a TV remote and the other watering a pot of soil that has human fingers growing out of it. As the news report continues in the background, the plant people look at each other. "Huh," one remarks. "That’s weird."

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